Let's hand Afghanistan the reins

The Newport News businessman had just returned from visiting Afghanistan, the home country he'd fled 24 years before to escape a communist invasion, a civil war and a brutal Taliban.

What he saw in Kabul and his neighboring village of Istalif left him giddy. People rebuilding, digging wells, farming, launching little businesses.

"People have hopes," he said then. "They have this freedom. They talk about the future. Forget about the past."

Afghanistan has changed, he said, "from night to day."

Five years later — twilight returns.

I contacted Miran Wednesday for his take on President Barack Obama's speech Tuesday night pledging 30,000 more troops to wrest Afghanistan from insurgents, restore security and, if mission accomplished, begin withdrawing by mid-2011.

But the old enthusiasm seemed extinguished. Miran hadn't even watched the speech. And he hasn't returned to Afghanistan since that trip in 2004.

"I wanted to go last year," said Miran, 51, "but things aren't very good, so didn't go. I don't want to go to market and be blown up. That kind of thing happens daily in Afghanistan. I don't want to go to market and see my friends and relatives being blown up. I love Afghanistan, but I don't love Afghanistan that much to get blown up."

Sure, many things are better now than before we shipped in troops in 2001. More schools, clinics, TV and radio stations. Clean water. People can sing openly now without much fear of retribution — they even have their own "Afghan Idol." There's far less risk of getting your hand cut off "because your beard is not flowing enough."

"But in terms of security," Miran says, "things are a lot worse."

And if and when American troops leave, he says, it will mean "chaos, civil war."

"It will be the worst nightmare you can imagine."

I wouldn't wish that kind of nightmare on anyone. I feel for good people facing it.

But, like many Americans, I've hit occupation burn-out. We can stagger under the weight of the world only so long. And our resources for nation-building, as Obama noted, are badly needed right here at home.

The president is taking hits from all sides for his plan. For too few troops. For too many. For committing, even cautiously, to any time frame for withdrawal. For expecting enough Afghanis to be trained by then to secure their own country.

I get the gist of it: Send in the surge so we can exit on a high note. An infusion of boots to beat down insurgents, like in Iraq. Violence quelled (for a bit), we leave.

After that? Anybody's guess.

But not our business.

We went into Afghanistan to get bin Laden. Credible intelligence reports have it he's not there anymore. Not for years. He's probably cave-sitting in neighboring Pakistan, chuckling into his hoary beard.

If the Afghanis want security for their country, they must secure it, themselves. Join the local police force, the national military. Stop the corruption. Fight their own battles — they've done it for thousands of years. We can't hand-hold, nation-build, sacrifice or enable indefinitely.

You can argue that for the past eight years we didn't take this war seriously. We back-burnered it. Bungled it. Focused our blood and treasure on Iraq instead.

But we can ask if the Afghanis have made the most of those years, too.

They want safety, peace, a decent place to raise a family. They don't want to fear every marketplace, every place of worship, every rooftop, every suspicious lump along a road.

So, too, did the 930 uniformed Americans who've died so far on Afghan soil. So, too, every American who will die there in the days, months and years to come.